Praying Out Front: A Practice for Discipleship

Just last weekend, I slipped out of the house for a couple of hours (and away from the piles of books and boxes soon to be shipped) and caught up with Ched Myers and Elaine Enns--two friends, dear mentors and gifted teachers.  I should have been packing, really.  Just days out from a cross-country move.  Two weeks from a new ministry in DC.  But chances like this are few, and their visit to Santa Cruz too good to pass up.  So, coffee, danish, conversation!  With Ched and Elaine!

The conversation that morning was lively, unsettling in all the right ways, and collaborative.  We talked about the communities we love and the gospel that provokes courage and experimentation.  We talked about the people we love and the challenge of living hopefully in unnerving times and places.  We talked about scripture, always a favorite topic when Ched's around, and how it is that our ancient stories still inspire and heal and liberate.  Ched and Elaine challenged me to think in fresh and imaginative ways about the opportunites ahead of me, and the challenges too, in Washington.

But I'm thinking this evening of the final moments of our time together in Capitola: how Ched and Elaine took me by the hand, outside the noisy diner, and prayed for me.  The three of us.  On a sidewalk in a busy beach town, with a summer crowd bustling by and brushing past.  They prayed for me: for my heart and my soul, for my family and my commitments, for my ministry and my sense of curiosity, for all the friendships and all the colleagues that keep me close and have my back.  And in their praying, through their praying, with their praying, I experienced an undeniable sense of blessing.  And courage. 

I experienced in those couple of minutes the most powerful and immediate sense of Jesus' presence: the presence of One who dares the difficult crossing; the presence of One who risks love and vulnerability and solidarity in an empire that rips its prophets to pieces; the presence of One who promises to me the strength and depth and lasting power of God's own grace.  Ched and Elaine prayed for me, and reminded me: they re-minded me of the only truth that dependably sets me free from fear and rage and resentment and all the other temptations of the time.  Agape! 

All of this is to say, I was reminded last weekend of the simply transformative practice of prayer, and how urgent it is among us in the church.  We are a people who pray for one another.  We are a people who don't hesitate to take one another by the hand--even on a busy street, even as the beach-goers rush by--to pray Jesus' blessing upon one another and into one another's lives and hearts.  We don't make God happen--but we do bear witness to the bold and relentless promises of the Spirit, whose love animates our friendships and quickens our steps.  And that witness is not insignificant.  It's not hokey or hocus pocus, either.  It was everything to me, just last Saturday.

I want to thank Ched Myers and Elaine Enns for their friendship and for their prayer.  (And I hope you'll check out the amazing work they do around theological animation and watershed discipleship at Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries: www.bcm-net.org.)  But I write this down tonight to remind myself of this practice that honors the brotherhood and sisterhood of beloved community and partners us with Jesus for the hard work and bold witness still ahead.  

So...when I sit down with friends to break bread and share a meal, I intend to pray, every time, without embarrassment or hesitation: in profound thanksgiving for the gift and in recognition of the opportunity to share that gift and enact justice in every way possible.

When I visit with a young disciple, taking risks and looking to follow Jesus in the ebb and flow of daily life and human suffering, I intend to pray, every time, without embarrassment or hesitation: to invoke God's love, and God's courage, and the promise of Jesus that sustain us in the toughest times.

Let me not forget this, Jesus, God, Spirit!  Let me not take this practice for granted.  I will cultivate it my own personal practice, and I will bring it into public life and congregational life whenever it's clear that we need you.  Which is always.  Let me never pass an opportunity to bear witness to Your daring care in our sweet and fragile and daring lives.